The village smells like salt and jasmine by nine in the morning, and by six most of the parking spots along Marguerite are already claimed by neighbors walking down to the sand. Summer here is less a season than a set of small rituals, and this year those rituals are shifting in a specific way worth paying attention to.
The one thing that changed the summer rhythm
Sherman Library & Gardens is between restaurants. 608 Dahlia, Chef Jessica Roy's garden-to-table lunch spot that ran for several years inside the gardens, closed last October when her lease ended and planned renovations began. The replacement is coming. Sherman's new restaurant will be called Hazeltine's, managed by Damian Orozco of the Tea House on Los Rios in San Juan Capistrano, and will occupy a Pacific Coast Highway-facing space near the new Bell Tower entrance. Regular dining is not available on site right now, and full service is scheduled for fall 2027.
That absence changes how a Corona del Mar weekend actually runs. The midday garden lunch has moved elsewhere in the village for the next year, dinners in the neighborhood are booking earlier, and Sherman itself now anchors mornings and late afternoons rather than the lunch hour. If you have lived here through past summers, you can feel the pattern shift.
The gardens are still the center of the village. What sits inside them at noon is what's different.
Dog Days of Sherman, and how to time a visit
The summer installation is the reason to go now. Sherman's 2026 Summer Art Installation features larger-than-life sculptures by mixed-media artist Elizabeth Laul Healey, who has fabricated more than 250 of these pieces, six of which are on view. Healey has ties to Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar. The open-air exhibit runs May 16 through September 7 and is included with regular garden admission.
With no daily lunch on site, the sharpest use of a visit is either the first hour after opening, when the light is still soft on the koi pond and the tropical conservatory, or late afternoon when the crowds thin. For a proper meal inside the gates, the answer this year is Hazeltine's preview teas.
| Hazeltine's Afternoon Tea, 2026 | Theme |
|---|---|
| June 14 | Tea among the Dog Days sculptures |
| July 12 | Tea among the Dog Days sculptures |
| August 16 | Tea among the Dog Days sculptures |
| September 13 | Grandparent's Day, secondary mosaic installation |
| October 18 | Harvest Tea |
Those dates are the only chance to try Orozco's hospitality inside Sherman before the full restaurant arrives. Parking is free, with mobility-impaired parking and the accessible entrance at Dahlia Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway.
A morning in Buck Gully before the village wakes up
The trail that most Newport Beach residents drive past without registering is a fifteen-minute walk from the flower streets. The Poppy Avenue trailhead sits in a residential block, and the canyon opens up quickly once you drop below street level.
- A 5.1-mile out-and-back near Corona del Mar, moderately challenging, averaging around two hours.
- Three bridges cross the creek along the main route, with four total in the Buck Gully Reserve; the aluminum bridges were helicoptered in when the trail was built.
- The reserve is a wildlife corridor with deer, bobcat, rabbits, and squirrels.
- As of October 2019, the mountain bike traffic is one-way uphill only, so you are not dodging descending riders on foot.
- Dogs are not allowed on the trail.
- Free street parking in the residential area; read the posted signs.
The overlooked move is the Bobcat Trail loop. Halfway back to the start, Bobcat Trail climbs to San Joaquin Hills Road, where a vista opens to the Pacific and to Newport Harbor. It adds a couple of miles and roughly an hour, and it turns a canyon walk into a coast-and-harbor view in a single outing. In summer, start by six-thirty. By ten, the shaded canyon sections are the only comfortable stretches.
If you are choosing between Buck Gully and the flat option, the flat option is the stretch of sand at Little Corona Beach at the foot of Poppy Avenue, which pairs cleanly with a Buck Gully morning because both trailheads sit within a few blocks of each other.
Where to eat, given that the gardens are quiet at noon
The village dining scene has always been dense for its footprint, and the Sherman gap has redirected foot traffic into it. A few notes on the fixtures.
Five Crowns and SideDoor. Five Crowns is a replica of one of England's oldest country inns, a Corona del Mar dining fixture since 1965. In 2009, the Frank family reopened the traditional British pub at Five Crowns as SideDoor, Corona del Mar's first and only English-style gastropub, run as a separate operation within Five Crowns. If you have out-of-town guests staying with you in July, this is the reservation that will make the trip feel local without feeling like a tourist errand.
CdM Restaurant and Under CDM. CdM Restaurant is an art-driven, chef-driven concept from Hollywood producer McG in partnership with restaurateur Jordan Otterbein, who together built A Restaurant in Newport Beach. The kitchen is led by Executive Chef Elvis Morales, and there is a speakeasy directly below the restaurant, with no password or reservation required. The bar stays open after dinner service for a nightcap. The speakeasy is the useful detail on a summer Saturday when the upstairs is fully committed.
Bandera. A neighborhood Southwestern American restaurant with an outdoor patio and an outdoor fireplace. The iron skillet cornbread is the anchor of the menu, along with tuna poke, kale salad, and grilled artichokes. It reads as a weeknight place more than a Saturday one, and that is the point in July.
The pattern is worth naming. With no lunch at Sherman, the village's midday tables are absorbing that demand. Dinner reservations at the fixtures are booking earlier in the evening than they did last summer, and the walk-in speakeasy under CdM Restaurant has quietly become the safety valve.
Small civic signals of the season
Two markers tell you summer is on. The first is the row of American flags installed up and down Pacific Coast Highway. The Corona del Mar Flag Committee places the traditional American flags along PCH for the July 4th holiday, and the committee looks for volunteers each year. The second is the village's own event cadence, which the CdM Chamber of Commerce publishes as a running calendar of community mixers and networking evenings across the summer months.
If you are hosting family or friends who visit annually, the most Corona del Mar arrangement is straightforward: Buck Gully at seven, Sherman by ten for the sculptures, lunch on a shaded patio in the village, a walk down Marguerite to the sand, dinner at Five Crowns or an early sit at CdM with a nightcap downstairs. The trip does not require a car after breakfast.
A note on next summer
The Sherman restaurant story is worth watching. Hazeltine's is planned as a fusion of farm-to-table cooking with an expanded operating schedule, occupying a prime PCH-facing space. The name comes from Moses Hazeltine Sherman, the gardens' namesake, and specifically for his daughter Hazeltine. When it opens in the fall of 2027, the noon center of gravity in the village will shift again. For this summer and the one after, the rhythm is the one described above.
That rhythm is the reason so many owners here stay put through their kids' generation and into the next. The village is small enough that a single restaurant closing changes the shape of a weekend, and small enough that a walk from Poppy to Marguerite is a full itinerary.
If you own a home in Corona del Mar and are considering a quiet, discreet conversation about its current value or how the market is treating waterfront and village-adjacent properties this year, Kim Bibb works by referral and by request. Request a Confidential Home Valuation to begin.
